Michael Shapiro of ModernCaptital (left) and Barrett "Baz" Crites of Atomic Indy (right)

Taken together, the participants constituted a pretty impressive group. (By the way, has there yet been coined a word for a group of bloggers?)  Atomic Indy’s Baz was there, along with the Urbanophile (that’s some SERIOUS blogging), Apartment Therapy, and many others, about 15 in all.  I had visited some of their blogs prior to the June 12 tour, but my own digital world is on the narrow side, I have to confess, so most were new to me.  Suffice it to say that as folks were introducing themselves, I could only smile and nod, and reflect inwardly on my opportunity to see the Miller property act as one of the agents that would transform – if only for a weekend – a virtual community of iPhone-addicted hipster inhabitants of the blogosphere into a real-time, flesh-and-blood fellowship of Columbus, Indiana, architectural enthusiasts.

Group photo of bloggers at another mid-century modern residence in Columbus

It’s been great to have opportunities to conduct individuals and groups through the property; I’ve been able to get a sense of what has the greatest impact on people and of possible rhythms of a tour experience.  For many people – and for a lot in the bloggers’ group (where’s that word I need?) – seeing the central living area of the Miller House for the first time is an experience that doesn’t require much chatter from the docent or tour guide.  It’s pretty powerful.

Miller House interior

And that’s a hard one for me, having given tours of one kind or another since I was working at Nissley Vineyards before being old enough to taste the wine samples I was pouring.  Left to my own devices, I will talk ‘til my mouth is dry and I am out of breath, but the Miller House has taught me the value of silence as an interpretive tool as nothing else has done.

Individuals find in that silence time to form their own responses, questions perhaps, or to remember and compare other sites they have visited.  For some, the response can be quite deeply emotional.  One of the bloggers – OK, it was Baz – mentioned to me at one point while lagging behind others that the house had brought tears to his eyes.  I sympathized, having experienced the same thing many months earlier while viewing the landscape and feeling the impact of the soft green, near-perfect turf of the expansive west lawn stretching away beneath me in the glow of afternoon sunlight.

Miller House exterior

After having lived for almost 10 years in Indiana, the day of the bloggers’ tour was the hottest, most oppressive I can recall.  Thank goodness for the air conditioning in the house (Mr. Miller originally thought that central air wouldn’t be necessary – glad he changed his mind).  After seeing the interiors, we adjourned to the outdoors for a look at the gardens, and for some cocktails and refreshments.  Beads of perspiration glistened on every forehead and moistened every hairdo, but in spite of the soupy atmosphere, folks seemed glad for a chance to linger in the garden.

Miller House exterior

With dinner awaiting at another location, the bloggers’ party at the Miller House eventually shifted its venue.  Violent thunderstorms were just about to erupt in the superheated and saturated twilight. The bloggers and I took the property’s calm beauty away with us as the storms broke.  The electricity of the experience later crackled through the blogosphere.

Its visual resonance is amplified by having been recorded by two of the most important architectural photographers of the twentieth century, Ezra Stoller (1915-2004)  and Balthazar Korab (1926-  ).  As we work to understand the property and the changes it underwent, to have the photographs taken by these men is to sift a treasure almost beyond one’s wildest hope. Many preservation projects must rely on much less for visual documentation.  Imagine being immersed a career of genealogical and historical research and suddenly working on an individual whose every portrait had been taken by Cecil Beaton or Irving Penn!

Monica and Balthazar Korab, Photo by Mark Zelonis

My first look at Ezra Stoller’s work was in The Galveston That Was by Houston architect Howard Barnstone.  First published in 1966, the book contains photographs by Stoller and by Henri Cartier-Bresson, and is credited with dramatizing the importance of architectural preservation in the decayed coastal city.  Stoller captured the Miller House and Garden shortly after its completion, some of the images appearing in Architectural Forum of September 1958 and in an article titled “A New Concept of Beauty” in the February 1959 edition of House and Garden.  In keeping with the family’s wishes, the house was published without naming its owner or location.  Stoller’s images, however, assumed a life of their own, achieving great staying power and continuing to illustrate publications about the property decades later.

While Stoller’s visits to the Miller House and Garden were limited to a brief period just after the house’s completion, Korab made several trips to Columbus over many years and so developed an archive of images that captures a sense of evolution and change.  Judging from his images, Stoller’s interest seems to have been more in the house than the garden, with the landscape appearing primarily at the margins of his photographs.  In contrast, Korab’s work responds equally to the architecture and to the landscape, giving it tremendous value to the effort to unravel the garden’s secrets.  Eero Saarinen:  Buildings from the Balthazar Korab Archive, published in 2008, presents a significant sampling of his work at the Miller property.

In June of this year, I had the opportunity to travel to Balthazar Korab’s studio in Troy, Michigan, with Mark Zelonis, Ruth Lilly Deputy Director of Environmental and Historic Preservation at the IMA, in order to review hundreds of photographs.  For the better part of two days, we visited with Balthazar and Monica Korab at their home and studio, enjoying their generous and gracious hospitality in an atmosphere that combined photography, architecture, gardens, and history, all enlivened with the Korabs’ sense of humor and whimsy.  An additional delight was the chance to see the Korabs’ own garden, built over decades on the gentle slopes surrounding their 19th-century house.

Korabs' Studio, Photo by Mark Zelonis

Korabs' Garden, Photo by Mark Zelonis

It was a joy to be with them both, to review the images of the Miller House and Garden with the man who took them, and to listen to anecdotes of a career that can only be described as humbling.  We heard stories of his early association with Le Corbusier, of his entry in the design competition for the Sydney Opera House, his work in Italy during and after a devastating flood in the 1960s, and of his work in Saarinen’s office while it was developing designs for the Miller house.  Of the Millers’ living room fireplace, a simple but exquisitely detailed freestanding cylinder, Korab remarked that the lengthy process of arriving at so pure a design had been responsible for changing him from an architect to a photographer.

Miller House Living Room, Photo by Balthazar Korab©

We spoke of his work to photograph the model for Minoru Yamasaki’s World Trade Center, which was so large that Korab had to rent a space to accommodate both the model and the necessary photographic equipment.  Monica Korab quipped at one point that Balthazar had photographed most of the works of what she called the “brand name” architects of the twentieth century.  I asked about Philip Johnson’s house for the Houston collectors and philanthropists John and Dominique de Menil (coincidentally, it was they who supported publication of The Galveston That Was).   In a moment, my inquiry was rewarded with a large file of color transparencies that recorded the idiosyncratic glory that resulted when the Menils, great collectors of surrealist art, engaged couturier Charles James to design the home’s interiors.  Another treat was to see photographs of Alexander Girard’s residence in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and to gain some insight into how his taste intersected with that of the Millers in designing and decorating their interiors.  Almost as an afterthought, out of the files came images of the interiors of Georgia O’Keefe’s house.  I was reeling by this point, feeling myself on the edge of a body of work so vast I could barely see into it, let alone comprehend it.

Balthazar Korab’s Genius Loci:  Cranbrook was my memento of the trip to Michigan.  Beautiful as this book is, however, I will remember the visit more for having been in the presence of so deep a repository of experience, of so keen a visual intelligence, whose work has helped shape our perception of the work of the 20th century’s greatest architects.

Lilly House at the IMA

Interior view of Lilly House

The Miller House and Garden crept into my awareness at some time while Oldfields had my full attention.  I don’t remember when I first learned of it, but I remember distinctly two things about the impression I had.  It was an extraordinarily beautiful and important property, and it was difficult to gain access to it.  Visiting lecturers or groups might sometimes make requests to see the property, but it was rare that we could accommodate them.  The Miller House and Garden seemed remote and mysterious.  In the meantime, I still had plenty to occupy me with Oldfields.  I rarely thought about the home in Columbus.

When I first saw the Miller House and Garden in April of 2007, the situation was entirely different from seeing Oldfields in 2000.  The Lilly family had been gone from Oldfields for over 30 years, during which the IMA changed and adapted its use of the house, the interiors drifting away from their domestic appearance all the while.  By 2000, it conveyed little impression of being a home.  By contrast, Mrs. Miller was still living in her home when I visited for the first time.  Having been the Millers’ home for almost exactly 50 years at that time, it possessed all the communicative power that came from being the undisturbed repository of family possessions.  A sizeable group made the visit that day, so the conditions for viewing were less than ideal.  Even with the distractions of people milling about and chattering, the house’s impact was striking.  Striking for the qualities of light and space, for the luxurious materials modestly used, for the kinds of objects in the house, but perhaps most of all for the owners’ personalities that the objects hinted at.

At Miller House, looking over floor plans

The landscape, designed by Dan Kiley, was another revelation.   Nothing I had seen prepared me for it, for its beautifully direct use of formal design elements – line, mass, and color – and for its elegant contrasts between the most basic of landscape elements:  light and shade, stone and turf, enclosure and openness, higher and lower elevation, close and distant perspectives.

Miller House in Columbus, IN

Two years later, I am still processing my response the property.  I’m not sure how much the property is continuing to reveal itself to me and how much may be due to a growing ability to apprehend and appreciate.  Now we are planning for the approach we will take to interpret the Miller House and Garden.  Once again, an experience to savor.